Breakable Ciphers, The
Overview The Breakable Ciphers (originally the Unbreakable Ciphers) were a set of coded messages written by Harrican Syldanade on his seventh deathbed. Originally intended to be a series of messages to be deciphered and read years after his death, they were all instead decoded within twenty minutes of their release. Realizing the number and severity of crimes he had just admitted to, the sickly and crippled Syldanade vanished yet again, leaving behind nothing but a note. The note simply read "Well, shit. ''-H''" Authorities from hundreds of planets tried to track him down for several months before finally giving up. When asked why they gave up pursuit so relatively soon, one representative replied "Hell, the Asashi Rosa probably got him already, anyways." The Ciphers Cipher One: "The Many, Many, Many, Many, Many, MANY People I Have Slept With" Syldanade's first cipher was actually disguised as a seven-hundred page novel, entitled "The Many, Many, Many, Many, Many, MANY People I Have Slept With". Very momentarily thought to just be one last instance of Harrican bragging about anything he could to everyone who would listen, this seven hundred page book of smut was quickly revealed to be an encrypted message by the first person to look at it without being distracted by the exceptionally, incredibly graphic descriptions of Syldanade's many, many sexual conquests (spanning man, woman, squid, and coffee table, among many other things). By isolating a few specific characters from the book's pages - letters printed in a neon pink instead of the standard black - the solver of this cipher was able to spell out the message hidden within the text. When deciphered, the message hidden in the book read as follows: "Huh, you actually figured this one out. Well, I suppose you want some info worth the effort, so here you go. I am, in fact, the one responsible for murdering the whole presidium of Gallantricus. In my defense, however, I thought that I was using tear gas, and not nerve gas. Hey. Anyone could make that mistake." As a side note, this book went on to be the top-selling romance novel of all time, selling over three hundred and fifty million copies galaxywide. It has been globally praised as the most creative and depraved novel of all time - even today, people and societies continue to come up with new awards explicitly for the purpose of honoring this supposed masterpiece. Ciphers Two and Three: The Twin Ciphers The second and third enciphered messages were actually both a part of the same block of text. The characters and words words of both messages were interwoven, turning the messages into one huge, illegible block of text. Normally, deciphering something like this would have taken much longer than the five minutes it actually took, but for Syldanade's astonishing lack of subtlety. He printed the entire 20-page ciphertext in two different colors, with the letters belonging to the first message in blue and the letters belonging to the second in red. His reasons for doing this still perplex scholars, whose primary theory is that he originally wrote this cipher in two colors to help keep track of what he had written, and merely forgot to fix the coloring before finalizing the message. The messages are too long to print here, but the gist of them are as follows. Message Two: "I, Harrican Syldanade, ''*several pages of nothing important*, ''and as a result of my need to satisfy my extremely impressive libido during my three month stay with them, may have introduced prostitution to the Sisters of the Pure Flame. Though, to be fair, I think this one benefitted everyone in the end." Message Three: "Also, ''*several more pages of filler only interesting to Syldanade* ''but a few years back, I kinda landed the ''Argos on the galaxy's largest Shintuda temple in the middle of the night. I moved the ship before anyone else realized what had happened, and managed to convince the members of the sect that the destruction was an act of their god, angry and disappointed in how their lives did him too much dishonor. As I recall, they took that news pretty hard. Man. Now that I think about it, I really can't believe they fell for that. *three and a half pages of nothing but laughter* ''Oh well. Sorry about that, guys." Cipher Four: Syldanese The fourth of his confessions is universally considered the cleverest of the bunch, involving the creation of his own slang/language, Syldanese. Generally considered too crude for polite company (or any company at all, really), every youth learns at least enough to be truly and expressively crude with their friends, parents, and teachers. The message itself was written in this language, with no additional frills or methods of encoding. After translation, it read as follows: "I'm also responsible for the creation of the Apelagic Generator. I mean, I know you already know that, but honestly, it's something I'm kinda proud of. And really, it still is something that bears confessing. Man, am I really barely halfway done with these confessions? ''" Cipher Five: The Interpretive Dance This message, combined with the first one, reinforces the theory that he planned this series of messages - or at least one or two of them - long before they were released. A crowning achievement in expressing meaning without words, this drunken, exaggerated dance, apparently recorded almost twenty years before it was left as one of his messages, is somehow able to get an exact meaning across in such a definite manner that nobody has even thought to question the accepted translation. A sixteen-minute opus of theatricality, parts of this dance have been emulated and altered by many musical groups and dance troupes, to critical acclaim. The fifteen-second motion for "caused a chain reaction that ultimately destroyed the barren, hostile planetoid" is actually used, unaltered, as the main (and only) dance steps to the club anthem "My Love For You Caused A Chain Reaction That Ultimately Destroyed Your Barren, Hostile Heart". Paraphrased, the message contained within reads: "''Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit. ''(It is quite possible that the message was damaged before it was ever viewed, causing this single motion to be repeated almost a hundred times.) ''Well, fortunately, I learned my lesson about testing unknown machinery in densely-populated areas. If I hadn't, this apology would probably be a lot more sincere. Let's just say you should be glad that I didn't test this anywhere near your homeworld, and instead tested it on some random lifeless planetoid in an uncharted system. Suffice it to say, the device made a lot of pretty lights, a lot of less-pretty lights, a couple of soul-rending sounds, and then a really, really large beam of energy which caused a chain reaction that ultimately destroyed the barren, hostile planetoid. On second thought, who cares about that? Nobody would ever really know about it unless I told them." Cipher Six: *REDACTED* Author's Note: I am reminded by many of my esteemed colleagues that people who write about this cipher tend to wind up dead, fully exsanguinated and missing an eye. In the interest of future scholastic pursuits and keeping all of the author's blood inside the author, this message will be skipped over. Cipher Seven: "That Can't Possibly Be What He's Saying" The last of Syldanade's ciphers, if it can even be called that, was a block of unencoded text - his final confession, out in the open, legible by all. Scholars to this day still debate why he considered this the last of his ciphers. Many argue that his brain wound up failing him in his weakened state. Others say that Syldanade figured that the intellectual elite would argue over the manner the text was encrypted. Many of the remainder think that Harrican decided that his final confession was so incredible that everyone who read it would decide it was nothing but a red herring. The message read: "And finally, my last confession. This is a pretty bad one, even by my standards. 'So... I may have... how to put this gently. While under the influence of many, many mind-altering substances, I might have started jabbing at some of the brighter buttons on my ship's console, and accidentally carpet-bombed half of Spissium IV's population into oblivion. Again, I feel really, REALLY bad about this. I'm sorry."